


i'm more fool than wise

by transvav



Category: Minecraft - Fandom, Realm of Mianite - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Realm of Mianite, exploring grief, has parts of all three 'seasons', i guess, sort of? sort of.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:54:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28644054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transvav/pseuds/transvav
Summary: “does it hurt?”“not really.”“someday, it will, little one,” he is told. “but perhaps not in the way you think. you may break your arm, and feel the shards of bone beneath your skin, and that will be painful, but that’s a temporary sort of hurt. there are worse types to feel, jordan. and i’m sorry.”
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	i'm more fool than wise

**Author's Note:**

> 'hey chase what the fuck is this' who knows not meeee anyways enjoy this. mess

jordan is barely five, and the winters are biting, even on the port town. the cold seeps into his bones a bit too much‒ he wasn’t properly protected for this, is the thing. most winter clothing is handmade for children in every house, by their family, but jordan does not exactly _live_ with a family, is the thing. so the most he has is the threadbare coat and shirt, and torn cloth that he uses to wrap around his hands and feet carefully for socks and shoes. it doesn’t exactly help, but it does better than nothing.

still, he ends up with frostbitten cheeks and fingertips, and the start of it is curling up on his feet.

“does it hurt?” the priest asks him when he comes back to the shack next to the temple.

everything is like static, pins and needles, numb and yet _sharp_ to his system, and he furrows his brow when he sniffles‒ not from crying, no, but from the sickness that was starting to show in him. the priest hums, and sits him on the bed, wrapped in furs and knitted blankets. the priest in gentle in his ministrations, and the pins and itching worsen as he ends up with his extremities in tubs of warm water, and a wet cloth of the same temperature pressed against his face.

“not really,” he ends up saying in response, and the priest nods knowingly, gently combing through his hair with his fingers. unbeknownst to jordan, he resolves to ask for squid ink again soon- the dye is fading into shining streaks again, and declan cannot figure out what color it’s supposed to be, but it can’t be good for the boy, so they hide it under the natural darkness.

“someday, it will, little one,” he is told. “but perhaps not in the way you think. you may break your arm, and feel the shards of bone beneath your skin, and that will be painful, but that’s a temporary sort of hurt. there are worse types to feel, jordan. and i’m sorry.”

“like when da didn’t come back from the storm,” jordan asks. “or when ma didn’t come back from the healer?”

“their pain was temporary too, jordan. they‒ they ended up somewhere better. where it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“no,” jordan clarifies. “not _their_ hurt.”

but he’s five, and it’s difficult to say exactly what he wants to say. he’s always had an issue speaking his own mind, is the thing, and his fists clench into little tiny uncomfortable frustrations. he doesn’t know how to talk about the hurt he sees in other people’s faces when he asks about his ma and da‒ how their eyes ache, and their throats bob, and how their voices falter. he doesn’t know how to talk about the way the priest looks at him when he thinks jordan isn’t paying attention. there’s an emotion there he doesn’t have a name for, but it’s proper title is sympathy, apology, an askance of needing forgiveness. something in the priest’s face when he’s looking without a mask looks at jordan and sees bad, bad things. and on top of that, he doesn’t know how to say it without the priest just treating him and his words like he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

he’s five. so he chews at the inside of his cheek and tries to make it bleed, and goes on to wonder if the priest thinks that scars hurt for forever.

* * *

“when a god claims you, it might hurt,” tucker explains, and jordan’s lips purse a bit, his gaze drifting towards the priest.

it’s not his version of declan, he knows. he’s transferred enough worlds to know that his father figure is long gone from his life, but it’s still a reminder that he really is meant to be a champion‒ there’s no mistaking the strange coincidence that he and tucker were raised by priests themselves, and tom, though holding little memory of his younger years, admitted to finding declan strangely familiar.

“like, in what way?” jordan thinks aloud, kicking his legs a little freely. the cliff would be daunting to anyone under normal circumstances, but he enjoys the breeze in his hair, the sharp drop into almost nothing, even with the pond at the bottom. it reminds him of something he doesn’t think he’s ever really known‒ if he closes his eyes, the world is dark around him, and the grass feels more like stone, and there really _is_ emptiness waiting for him if he falls.

“mmm,” tucker hums, and leans back against the post keeping his house up, looking up to the sun. he seems a little more wary of how lax jordan is on the edge, but hey, _he_ built the house here. “it’s kind of like... a low burn. it pricks for a while, and it hurts in the moment more than anything, but after that it kind of just... simmers. like a tattoo, almost. it hurts _more_ when the gods are angry with you, i guess? it hurts like _fuck_ when you get smited, i’ll tell you that.”

“ah,” jordan says, and then continues to watch the waterfall hit the pond far, far below him, while tucker watches the clouds.

he doesn’t really know what he expected‒ he’s seen hurt in other people, by now, _real_ hurt, and he’s experienced it himself in some cases. it’s silly, but jerry was important to him in a way he wouldn’t have been able to explain to anyone who’d never get that same type of hurt. he’s lucky enough to not make attachments to other people, exactly, so it’s not strong, but he feels like this might be the start of that being changed. it feels like a mockery towards him‒ they are champions. they are destined to be lost to war.

and a couple days later, when he recognizes himself in her, he finds the mark spreading from his shoulder blades in an instant. and tucker wasn’t wrong, it does sort of sting when it shows‒ a lingering, needling type pain, but it nearly comforts him, like scalding tea on a winter day, or an ice cube on his skin in sweltering heat.

all in all, it doesn’t exactly hurt any more than an arrow wound, or a sword through his spine. it doesn’t hurt like betrayal or fits of anger. it doesn’t hurt like the idea that he’s done wrong, when he’s in that glass tank and the water is rising and declan’s eyes aren’t his own, and jordan can see the warring magics above the priest’s head. it doesn’t hurt like the frustration he feels when he realizes some people will never get their comeuppance. it doesn’t hurt like it does when the pirates don’t believe him at his word that he _is_ her champion.

it doesn’t hurt like it does when capsize is gone.

and it doesn’t hurt like it does when his goddess looks at him, tears in her eyes, and they are given the briefest of moments before he has to go, because he _does_ , and he hates it. it doesn’t hurt like it does when she brushes her fingers through his hair carefully and the squid ink dye comes off like water, but nothing seems to change, seeped so deeply into his roots that it’s like it can’t grow without that shadow there. it doesn’t hurt like it does when she wishes him luck on the wind.

the mark doesn’t hurt, but the reminder it leaves him with? well, that’s a different story altogether.

it hurts.

it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_ , _this_ is what hurt it, he thinks, curled into his knees and gripping at the back of his head, because it hurts so fucking much. and this must be what his priest had seen, so far and away. it feels like there is ash beneath his fingernails, caking the lines of his palms, and gods damn him nothing is going to wash this away. it feels less like dust and more like hot coal, and trails little scars across every inch of skin it’s exposed to. his chest aches‒ and then beyond that, everything starts to go numb.

he slams a fist to the ground, to get that feeling back. it works for a moment, and then it goes to nothing. and he slams _again_ , into nothing. again, and again, and again, and maybe he breaks the callouses on his skin, maybe his hand goes raw and he can’t fucking breathe but good gods. good fucking gods, he gets it.

this hurts more than anything, and he is struggling to catch his hiccuping breath through sobs, and the tears roll down his face almost endlessly and he can’t _see_ , and it hurts.

he wants to scream, but who would hear?

he gets it. he pushes himself up onto his knees and struggles to calm down. every time he thinks it’s fine it stabs at him again, the last of her magic drifting down like snow around him, and he just keeps. it just goes. and he keeps‒ he keeps, he keeps.

this is hurt, he thinks, and wipes at his eyes. _this_ hurts.

* * *

“this might hurt,” she tells him.

she is not his goddess, but looking at her still aches‒ she reminds him too much of the goddess he’d fully lost, not the one he had still waiting for him in celestria. she seems pained, seeing the purple streaks in his hair‒ they’d come in more recently, when he’d washed ashore the isles, sun bleaching the color back into the dark curls. the demigodhood seems wholly unnecessary‒ there are ways beyond this. there are ways.

but he’s already won whatever prize they think they’re giving him. these deities are not who he’s learned to care about, mockeries of the ones he’s lost and left behind. she, in particular, feels _wrong_ , and it kind of claws at him, crawls over his skin, because he’s missed her and this is not _her_. so when she appeared in that temple, he’d known almost right away that it wasn’t right. her presence was _too_ cold, _too_ unending, and it felt like the pressures of the depths of the ocean, deeper than anything he’d ever felt when he was near her. this isn’t her, and they both know it‒ this is a game they’re playing. no one else has noticed.

so is it giving up if he just... lets it happen, he wonders.

and to be fair, she’s not wrong. it feels like a living core of lava, like sometimes made to bury deep within his chest and burn him alive from the inside out. it sinks like a stone and makes his heart race, that power, and it feels like there’s no breaks between beats, no rests, no pauses, a constant thrum like a hummingbird, it is a constant that he cannot escape and he never could‒ and he’s heard it, before, he’s felt it in the wrist of the goddess that had cradled his face before he’d jumped, in the palm of the god that grabbed his arm and warned him of the consequences of rejecting chaos’ favor. he knows this energy and he hates that it’s within him‒ he tries to stay steady on his feat but god, it _does_ hurt in a way, but not the way that lasts, he knows.

so when he sits on his heels and grips at his chest and his shirt that sticks to his skin by the sweat, and he chokes on his breath because his lungs no longer feel big enough for every inhale he takes, when he tastes every big of energy on the air and can’t even seen right due to how bright the magic around them all is‒ good gods, quintessence is something so terribly strong that it tugs him in so many directions and chains him deeper and deeper into the earth, tries to drag him back to the sky, over to the sea, it doesn’t make sense, but it does. when all of it is so, so much, and he can’t barely feel the blood race, yes, it hurts, in a variety of ways, but it will pass.

what doesn’t pass is the thought that he’s failed her by doing this. what doesn’t pass is the ache of missing her, the real her, the ache of failure. what doesn’t pass is the sight of andor, in inertia. what doesn’t pass is martha’s nightmares. what doesn’t pass is steve’s sacrifice. what doesn’t pass are the ianitas that he wasn’t strong enough to keep safe. what doesn’t pass are the voices of wisdom and intuition on a dying world’s breath. what doesn’t pass is missing home, what doesn’t pass is the dust and ashes under his fingernails, what doesn’t pass is the grave in the tree branches where the wind creaks and the vines sway and he finds peace despite it.

what doesn’t pass is the missing link to tucker. to sonja. to wag.

what doesn’t pass is the missing link to his real home.

“it will hurt,” she told him.

but it doesn’t.

not really.

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](http://transandor.tumblr.com)  
> i'd like a comment but i do not control you so  
> 


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